Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported last week that NATO’s top officer, Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, told German lawmakers in a confidential briefing that NATO had lost track of 10,000 such missiles that had been in the hands of Muammar Qaddafi’s forces.

Andrew Shapiro, the US assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said he had no estimate of how many were missing but said Libya was thought to have had about 20,000 when the war against Qaddafi began in February.

He said thousands were thought to have been destroyed during the NATO bombing campaign in behalf of anti-Qaddafi rebels, but there was an urgent need to account for the rest.

“We are very concerned about the threat that’s posed,” Shapiro told a media briefing after meetings with EU and NATO officials in Brussels. “In the wrong hands these systems could pose a potential threat to civil aviation.”

“There was broad consensus about the urgency of this threat and the need to take urgent action to address it,” he said.

“We know that terrorist groups have expressed interest in obtaining these weapons. The possibility that these weapons might cross borders is an area of considerable concern.”

Shapiro said the US State Department was planning to allocate another $25 million to help deal with the problem and to send more technical experts to Libya. He said it was seeking contributions from other countries as soon as possible.

“Our allies in Europe understand and share our urgency and are eager to work with us,” he said.

Shapiro said 14 US experts were already in Libya working to account for the missing missiles, known as MANPADs, or Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, and at least 50 would be sent. He said the teams had already destroyed hundreds of the weapons.
 

He said the United States had been working with Libya’s neighbors since the summer to discuss the need to protect airports and strengthen border controls.

British teams are already working in Libya as part of the effort to account for and destroy the missiles and other European Union states had expressed a strong interest in joining it, he said.

Shapiro said a similar problem had been faced in Afghanistan and Iraq, but Washington remained very concerned.

“We haven’t see any of these in use to our knowledge but we want to make that it doesn’t happen. That’s why we are taking every possible step.”

Shapiro said examination of storage bunkers showed “clear evidence that MANPADs were there and they’re not there now.

“The question is where are they now?“

Shapiro said the majority of the weapons were SA-7s, a Soviet-designed system dating back to the 1960s with a range of up to 4,200 meters (yards), and some more modern SA-14s.

The weapons are around six feet (1.83 meter) long and weigh about 16 kg (35 pounds) and have been used to attack airliners, though given their range, planes at high altitude are relatively safe.

The United Nations regards the proliferation of weapons in Libya as a major concern and says its new rulers need to establish a proper police force and army to replace hundreds of militias made of up of mainly volunteers.

Libya’s southern neighbor Niger has called the risk of cross-border arms trafficking “explosive.” Algeria, which shares a border with Libya, says it is worried Al-Qaeda militants will exploit disorder in the country to acquire arms.

Britain said on Monday that British military experts had helped disarm a number of surface-to-air-missiles in Libya and identified a number of places in the North African country where the weapons may be located.

NATO expressed concern earlier this month about reports that thousands of surface-to-air missiles had gone missing in Libya, and said it was the responsibility of the new authorities there to ensure weapons stocks were properly controlled.